by Holly Webb
“She will,” Mum promised. “She just needs to get used to us, Christy.”
“Anyway, we need to think about what to call her,” Dad pointed out.
Tia peered at the cat carrier. She could see white whiskers sticking out round the corner of it. The kitten was so pretty, she needed a pretty sort of name – like Rosie, or Coco – except that sounded too much like a poodle.
“What about Milly?” she suggested. “She looks like a Milly, I think.”
“Milly…” Mum nodded. “I like it.”
After dinner, Tia crouched down by the carrier. She didn’t want to scare the kitten, she just wanted to show her that someone was there. The kitten peeped out at her every so often.
Tia had been sitting there for a good twenty minutes when Milly finally edged her way further out from behind the carrier. Tia held her breath. Would she come right out?
“Tia! Are you still there?” Mum asked, coming into the kitchen.
The kitten whisked back behind the carrier with a flick of her tail.
“It’s bedtime. Don’t worry, Milly will be fine. Dad and I will keep checking on her.”
Tia trailed upstairs reluctantly. It felt so mean to leave the little kitten all by herself. She lay in the dark listening to Christy breathing in the bottom bunk, too worried to sleep.
At least she thought she was. She woke suddenly from a dream that she couldn’t really remember, except that it hadn’t been good. She had been searching for something…
Tia sat up in bed. It was late. Mum and Dad had surely gone to bed – she couldn’t hear their voices or the TV.
She could hear something, though. A sad, thin little wail. Yes, there it was again. The kitten!
Tia slid down her bunkbed ladder and padded as quietly as she could out on to the landing and down the stairs. She opened the kitchen door and whispered, “Puss puss… Milly… It’s so dark, I’ll have to put the light on. Don’t be surprised, all right?” She closed the door behind her and clicked on the light, blinking in the sudden glare. She’d expected to see the kitten dart back behind her carrier, or maybe she would be in her basket – but Tia couldn’t see her anywhere.
“Milly?” she murmured, turning slowly in the middle of the room. “Where are you?”
She has to be here, Tia told herself. I heard her. She can’t have got out of the cat flap. Dad had put the cat flap in, but they had kept it locked – Milly wouldn’t be allowed to go out until she’d had all her vaccinations. She was hiding, that was all. Where would a kitten like to hide? Tia wondered.
The oilcloth covering the kitchen table moved slightly, as though there was a draught – but all the windows were closed. Tia smiled and crouched down under the table. There, in the dim light under the cloth, a pair of blue-green eyes shone out at her. Milly was sitting on a stool, with the cloth tucked round her like a little tent.
“Hello,” Tia whispered.
The kitten stared back at her, and Tia settled herself against the leg of the table. “I’ll sit here,” she said sleepily. “Just to make sure you’re OK.”
She was half asleep when she felt little paws padding at her leg, and then Milly scrambled on to her lap and curled herself into a tiny ball.
“Tia! What are you doing under there?” Christy squeaked. “You weren’t in your bed – I came to find you!”
Tia blinked. The light was still on and the kitchen seemed very bright. “Is it morning?” she muttered.
“Yes! Did you sleep down here all night?”
“No… I came down in the middle sometime. Owww, I’m all stiff.” Tia tried to stretch out her legs without disturbing Milly, who was blinking at her owlishly.
Christy creeped under the table to join them and stroked Milly’s back, following the direction of the fur the way Tia had taught her. “I’m so glad she’s ours,” she said.
“I know,” Tia agreed. “I can’t wait to tell Lucy all about her at school tomorrow.”
“Oh, hello, you two – you three, I mean.” Mum peered under the oilcloth. “Did you come down early to play with her?”
Tia gave Christy a look and nodded. It was better that Mum didn’t know she’d been downstairs half the night…
After that first night, Milly settled in quickly. She didn’t stay confined to the kitchen for long – she was far too nosy. She missed her old home and all her brothers and sisters, but now she had a whole house to explore. She explored it properly, too – every surface, every shelf, every cupboard. She wasn’t big enough to climb the stairs at first, but whenever Tia and Christy were home, they were happy to carry her. And by the time she had been living with Tia’s family for a month, she was big enough to scramble up them by herself.
Milly’s favourite place was Tia and Christy’s room. It was full of toys to chase and boxes to wriggle in and out of. She was also fascinated by the ladder to Tia’s top bunk. Tia had carried her up there, but Milly wanted to be able to climb it on her own.
“What are you doing, kitten?” Tia said, laughing as she watched Milly from her desk. She was trying to do her homework, but Milly kept stealing her pencils and burying them under the bed.
Milly put her front paws on the first step – the ladder had flat, wide rungs, and it was easy enough to jump on to one. She managed to jump from the first step to the second. But then she wobbled and slid, and had to make a flying leap down on to Christy’s bed instead. Then she went prowling off through the soft toys, pretending that was what she had meant to do all along.
Tia wished she could play with Milly, but she had to finish her homework first.
It wasn’t until Christy came upstairs and let out a piercing shriek that Tia realized what Milly had been doing. One of Christy’s favourite toys was a feathery owl that Dad had brought back for her from a work trip. It always sat propped up at the side of her bed because it was made up of lots of tiny feathers and it was a bit fragile.
“Owly! She’s eaten Owly!” Christy howled.
Milly sat in the middle of the bed, looking rather confused. Christy did burst out crying every so often, she’d got used to that now. But she was being very loud and she was stamping about. Milly spat out a mouthful of the interesting feathers and slunk to the end of the bed, making for Tia.
“Whatever’s the matter?” Mum said, rushing in. “Oh my goodness. Christy, I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
“He’s all eaten and ruined…” Christy sobbed.
“Tia, how on earth could you have let Milly do that?” Mum asked.
“I didn’t see! I was doing my homework. Sorry, Christy…” Tia picked Milly up, looking guiltily at her little sister. “Maybe we can glue the feathers back on.”
“You shouldn’t cuddle her,” Christy growled. “She’s a bad cat!”
“Oh no, she isn’t! She didn’t know.”
Milly snuggled closer into Tia’s school jumper, not liking the angry voices.
“You’re scaring her!” Tia said, and Christy wailed again.
“I don’t care! She broke Owly!”
“Take that cat downstairs, Tia,” Mum snapped. “Honestly, after the pavlova yesterday as well. I never thought a kitten could be so much trouble.”
“I wish we had a kitten that didn’t eat things!” Christy gulped.
Tia hurried down the stairs with Milly in her arms. “You are silly,” she muttered. “I love you climbing about and getting into everything, but the pavlova was a disaster.”
Mum had been making a lovely pudding to take to a friend’s house, and she’d left it out on the counter while she answered the door. She came back to find a very happy cat, and a lot less whipped cream on top of the pavlova. Mum had had to buy a pudding instead, although Tia was sure it would have been all right if Mum had just moved the raspberries around a bit.
“I think you’d better try and be perfectly behaved for the next few days,” she told Milly, as she put her in her basket. “You’re definitely not Mum or Christy’s favourite cat right now.”
“You don’
t think there’s anything I can do about Milly, then?” Tia asked Laura, sipping at her juice. It was the weekend, and she’d popped over to get some advice on Milly’s naughty tricks.
Laura shook her head slowly. “Not much. Just make her get down every time you see her somewhere she shouldn’t be. A lot of it’s simply that she’s a kitten. She will get better as she gets older. Charlie used to knock things over all the time, but he doesn’t do quite so much climbing now.”
Tia sighed. It didn’t look like there was an easy answer. “I guess I’m lucky she hasn’t really spoiled anything of mine yet. Well, she did eat my sandwiches yesterday while Mum was doing my packed lunch. But that’s not the same as Owly. Christy is still really upset. She says we should take Milly back and get a better-behaved cat.”
“I suppose the thing to do is make sure anything precious is put away,” Laura said. “And shut the doors if there are rooms you don’t want her in.”
“Mmmm,” Tia agreed. “It’s just Christy never shuts doors.”
“Milly might learn to open them anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised. Actually, Tia, I’m glad you came over,” Laura said, reaching over to a pile of newspapers on one of the kitchen chairs. “I was going to talk to your mum or dad. Do you know if they’ve seen this?” She folded the newspaper over and showed a headline to Tia – CATNAPPERS STEAL PRECIOUS PETS.
“No!” Tia looked at it in horror. “Why are they stealing them?”
“To sell.” Laura was frowning. “It’s because pedigree cats are so expensive. The thieves steal them and then sell them for less than you’d pay at a breeder. I’m sure most of the people don’t realize the cats are stolen. The thing is, this article particularly mentions Bengals. Because they’re so fashionable. And I know that one lady who has one of Charlie’s littermates caught someone trying to tempt her cat out of her garden. She doesn’t live all that far from here.”
Tia jumped up from the table. “I’m really sorry, Laura, but I have to go home. Milly’s allowed out of her cat flap now. What if someone’s trying to steal her this minute?”
Laura tried to tell Tia that it was unlikely anyone would try and steal Milly, and she hadn’t meant to scare her. She was still letting Charlie go out, but only when she was around to keep an eye on him. “Just to be safe,” she explained.
Tia calmed down enough to finish her juice. But she refused a biscuit, and as she hurried back home she couldn’t help keeping an eye out for cat thieves. What would they look like, though?
Tia went down the side of her house to the back garden. Milly loved it out there. She bounced in and out of the plants, and spied on the bird table. Tia had noticed that only the bravest birds came to it now.
But Milly wasn’t sitting underneath the bird table and she didn’t come when Tia called, like she usually did. She was nowhere to be seen.
“Milly! Milly!” Tia called anxiously. She ran down the garden to look over the back fence into Mr Jackson’s garden. Milly liked it over there. Mr Jackson had a goldfish pond. She had climbed the fence at the side of the garden, too, but the people next door had a spaniel called Max, and he had barked at Milly so loudly that she’d jumped straight down again.
Just as Tia reached the back fence and looked through the trellis on the top, there was a splashing sound and a horrified yowl. Then something bounded across Mr Jackson’s garden. A small, bedraggled thing, trailing long streamers of green weed.
“That cat of yours is after my goldfish!” Mr Jackson shouted crossly to Tia. “Little menace!”
Milly jumped on to Mr Jackson’s compost bin and then up on to the fence, where Tia reached up and grabbed her. She shuddered at the clammy wet fur – Milly was soaking.
“I’m really sorry!” Tia gasped to the old man. “We’ll keep her inside!”
“We’ll have to,” she murmured to Milly, as she carried her down the garden. “Maybe we’d better lock the catflap, so you can only go out when one of us with you. I know you won’t like that much, but I’m not going to let anyone steal you!”
Tia was quite right. Milly was most unimpressed with being shut inside. She always followed Tia and Christy when they went out into the garden. She would chase the football, and sometimes Tia carried her up on to their climbing frame. Christy had forgiven her for shredding Owly now, and she would dance down the garden trailing bits of string for Milly to pounce on. But sometimes Milly wanted to go outside on her own, too. It wasn’t the same watching the birds from the kitchen windowsill.
Often she sat in the front window instead, especially in the afternoon, when she knew that Tia and Christy would soon be home. People sometimes pointed at her, and Milly could tell that they were saying nice things. One blond-haired man seemed to walk past the house quite often, just to see her. He always stopped and looked at her for ages. And at the other cat, the one that lived across the road.
Milly liked to stare at the other cat as well. But he usually pretended not to see her.
“Look, Christy, Milly’s watching for us again,” Tia pointed to Milly, sitting in the front window, and Milly leaped for the back of the sofa. She would jump from there to the arm, and then on to the floor to meet them at the front door.
“Nice cat!” There was a young man with blond hair walking slowly past their house on the way to his van. He was jingling the keys in his hand, and he smiled at Tia and Christy. “Is she yours? Does she always run and meet you like that?”
Tia smiled back. She loved it when people admired Milly. “Yes,” she said proudly.
“She’s beautiful. What is she, a Bengal?”
“Yes, she’s four months old,” Tia said.
The man smiled again and walked over to his blue van, which was parked further up the road.
Mum hurried up behind them. “Who was that you were talking to?” she asked.
“Oh – well, he was asking about Milly,” Tia said, frowning. She hadn’t really thought about it, but the man was a stranger, of course. “He seemed nice…” she added.
“No, he wasn’t,” Christy said firmly. “I didn’t like him.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, Christy,” Tia muttered, as Mum started to tell her off for chatting to people she didn’t know.
“You were just coming, Mum. You were almost with us,” Tia muttered. But she had a horrible feeling now that Mum and Christy were right. She shouldn’t have spoken to him. She sighed. “I suppose we shouldn’t tell people Milly’s a Bengal, should we? In case someone tries to steal her.”
Mum put an arm around her shoulder. “I’m sure that won’t happen, Tia. But next time, just say that I’m the person to ask, and come and get me! Come on, let’s get in the house. Milly’s probably having a fit by now.”
Tia had hoped that Milly would get used to staying inside, but the kitten still took every chance she could to sneak out. And she moved so fast she was very good at it.
One lunchtime, when Mum was just heading out for work, Milly slipped round her legs, aiming for the open door. But Mum swooped down and caught her just before she could escape.
“No, sweetie. I know you don’t like staying inside, but it’s to keep you safe.” Mum sighed. “Hopefully the police will catch those awful cat thieves soon. It’s been weeks. You stay there, and I’ll be back later with Tia and Christy.”
Crossly, Milly prowled back into the living room and jumped up on to the windowsill, watching Mum hurry away down the street. She hated it when they all went out. There was nothing to do. The cat on the other side of the road wasn’t even sitting in his window for her to look at.
And she was hungry. She uncurled herself, jumped down and wandered out into the kitchen to see if there was some food left in her bowl. There wasn’t.
Milly stalked over to the cat flap and glared at it. She didn’t understand why it didn’t work any more. It would let her back in from the garden, but now it would never let her out. She pawed at it, just in case, but it still didn’t work. It rattled though, which was a good noise, so Milly pawed it again.
This time, the catflap shook, and Milly got a delicious whiff of fresh garden air as the flap opened inwards a little way. Then it clicked shut again.
Milly stared at it. It had definitely been a bit open. She banged at it harder this time, and it flew open a little more. Enough for her to stick her paw in and stop it clicking closed.
Purring with excitement, the kitten wriggled her other paw into the gap and then poked her nose in too, flipping the cat flap all the way up, so she could jump out. She stared back at it triumphantly as she stood on the doorstep, and then she pranced out into the garden.
It was sunny and warm, and everything smelled good. Milly padded across the patio, sniffing here and there, and glancing up at the birds that circled and twittered overhead.
It was the smell of the wheelie bins that made her go down the side path. She was hungry, and although the smell wasn’t quite right, there was definitely food in there somewhere. She pattered curiously down the path and sniffed around the bottom of the bins. She was just considering trying to scramble up on to the top of one when next-door’s dog, Max, came galloping down the garden on his side of the fence, barking his head off.
Milly shot down the path like a rocket, her tail fluffing up. She remembered Max, all big teeth and flying ears. She wasn’t sure if he could get through the fence, but she wasn’t going to wait around to find out. She bounded into the front garden and jumped up on to the wall. She then licked her paws furiously, swiping them over her ears. She felt hot and bothered and cross, and washing helped – a little.
The sun was warm, and slowly her tail smoothed down again. Milly’s eyes half-closed as she watched the cars going past.
One of the cars stopped, a blue van that she was sure she had seen before. A young man with blond hair got out. Milly pricked up her ears. She had seen him before. He always stopped to admire her in the window. She pretended not to notice the man as he walked up the street, and she gave him a haughty look as he made friendly kissy noises at her.